The Black Watch (1929)

Is it because it's the beginning of the talkies that both McLaglen's and Myrna Loy's playing are almost ridiculous ?One should forgive the actress for her part of an Indian Joan Of Ark -but a maid who is fond of men,we are told- is not exactly what you call the part of her life.All that takes place in a pasteboard India looks like a poor man's "lifes of a Bengal Lancer"(which would appear six years later):even two names (Mohammed Khan and McGregor) are used in both movies.On the other hand ,all that takes place in Scotland shows John Ford's touch :the manly camaraderie, the brothers in arm singing "Auld Lang Syne" before leaving for France (WW1),the officer wrongly accused of cowardice -his superior warns him:"you will be a pariah"-;and more prosaically ,the missus ' piece of advice to the private about his privates and the soldier confessing later that at least at war he was left alone.The scene of the crystal ball almost predates the one in Mankiewicz's "Cleopatra" when Julius Cesar is murdered.

John Ford is in my opinion the greatest director that ever lived, and he rarely ever made a misstep. Many people have listed The Black Watch as a misstep, but in context I do not think that it is. It is true that it is dated in the way that the dialogue is spoken, but find me one sound picture from 1929 that is not.The problem was with sound pictures themselves, the movies had developed into near perfection in 1927-1928. But then sound became all the rage, and it wasn't profitable anymore for the studios to invest in silent movies. So the masterpieces of the late silent era were put on the back burner for stagy dramas with too much dialog or musicals even more stagy than the dramas.The Black Watch has Ford's German expressionism influenced photography that he started in the late twenties after meeting F.W. Murnau. It also has the Ford themes of Integration into a society, self sacrifice, and the bond between men.The one major drawback is the extremely stilted dialogue. No one really understood at the time how sound should be recorded live, which led to really irregular ways of saying lines. With long pauses between each others lines, since they did not want to step on each others' lines, so as to overwork the early microphones.Victor McLaughlin's acting wasn't his best, but he was much better than Myrna Loy who honestly seemed as though she had been hypnotized before going on the set. I thought the guy who asked forforgiveness for his violence towards his fellow man, who would then do something violent was funny.Compared to all of John Ford's other films this is near the bottom, but compared to everything else made in sound in 1929 this is at the top of the heap.

In 1895, 16-year-old Talbot Mundy fled the strait-laced Victorian upbringing of his native England for a life of adventure. He crossed the entire northern frontier of India, toward Tibet, spent four years in Africa, and traveled the Middle East in the wake of World War I.Colonial odysseys of the time led most writers to echo Rudyard Kipling's support of British imperialism or Sax Rohmer's "yellow peril." Not Mundy. His fantasy-adventure books challenged assumptions of Western cultural superiority.Mundy's writing, such as Om–The Secret of Ahbor Valley, Tros of Samothrace, and Queen Cleopatra, were based in Eastern religious teaching, informed by his membership in the Theosophical Society in San Diego, California.Radio won him an audience of millions of daily listeners in the 1930s. However, he had much less luck in Hollywood. Mundy's second book, King–of the Khyber Rifles (1917), had become an instant classic, telling of the fabulous Yasmini, who tries to conquer India. Mundy was a believer in full equality between the sexes, and such female characterizations were vivid and proactive. Native figures, especially Indians, often dominated Mundy's novels, placed in the position of imparting eastern wisdom to Western characters.Fox bought the screen rights to King–of the Khyber Rifles in 1928. At the end of the year Douglas Z. Doty offered a Continuity Outline, placing King in the "Black Watch," the first introduction of the key idea preserved in the final screenplay. Rewa Gunga is no longer a persona assumed by Yasmini, but a separate character, presumably because the androgynous combination of a woman who sometimes disguised herself as a man was regarded as too complex, or unusual, for audiences to fathom.The decision was made to film in sound, and a new writer, James Kevin McGuinness, was brought in for dialogue. After production, the American release title was changed from KING OF THE KHYBER RIFLES to THE BLACK WATCH, while the original title was retained in the United Kingdom.Donald King is summoned by the War Office and told that since he knows Pushtu and Hindustani like a native, he must prevent a holy war about to be incited by Yasmini, a goddess to the troublesome hillmen. The assignment requires King apparently leave the regiment as a slacker. Only after twenty four minutes does THE BLACK WATCH finally shift to the center of action--"Peshawar--on the northern frontier of British India--near the Khyber Pass"--but the movie's locale is never convincing as India.King meets his father's old companion, Risaldar Major Mohammed Khan, who prays "For all the violence I have displayed toward my fellow men, Allah forgive me." He is lifted from another Mundy novelette, "For the Salt Which He Had Eaten," to which Fox had also bought the rights. Officially deemed too old, Khan is glad to join King for a secret mission. Khan is the only character in the entire film redolent of Mundy, and as played by Mitchell Lewis, is perhaps the best acted individual as well.Finally, with more than half the film over, the narrative is about to reach the Khyber pass; only two-thirds of the film is set in India, and 40% per cent in the hills--versus nearly all of Mundy's book. The mystical portrayal of the Khinjan caves by Mundy is replaced in the film with a cacophonous din of loud prayer and fighting men that resembles Madison Square Garden gone mad.Rather than Mundy's emphasis on the indigenous people, in THE BLACK WATCH it is on the Scots and the World War I subplot. The scenes in England serve as a framing story, grounding the excursion into Asian culture by showing another foreign tradition, Scotland, one less foreign to the audience. The mood of the Indian scenes is destroyed by cross-cutting to the trenches of France, paralleling the front lines of France and King's service in India.Yasmini reveals to the surprised King that she is a descendant of Alexander the Great. She relates a prophecy that when a woman of Alexander's line shall find the mate ordained to rule these tribesman, they shall conquer together. King's restrained response is to wander to the other side of the room, saying "It can't be," despite his growing love for her.King's men remove their native robes to reveal British uniforms, assembling their machine guns in a critical spot overlooking the cavern, bottling up the hillmen, and setting the stage for a struggle that is small and obviously budget-conscious (the film was made for $400,000). Yasmini, dressed in angelic white, says "Thou hast triumphed," and is shot by one of her own; King lifts her away as his men's machine guns spray the cavern. King goes to Yasmini's room where her maids have placed her dying body. In the moving death scene, the best of the film, the couple are clearly in love. The final sequence parallels the opening, returning to a dinner of the Black Watch, their numbers thinned around a smaller table.McLaglen turned out to be far more capable in his role than Loy was in hers, particularly in the dialogue scenes. The film was moderately successful, with an estimated gross of $800,000.Ford's direction won critical praise for its visual and auditory artistry, but not its narrative sense. The style nullifies the adventurous elements, preventing THE BLACK WATCH from becoming the spectacle it might easily have been; the largest number of extras go into the scene in the London railroad depot. The entire movie is deliberately overdone, from the pacing to the acting.THE BLACK WATCH is one of the most unusual, even bizarre, commercial movies made during the early years of sound movies. It belongs to a time when the empire adventure, or adventure of any type in the colonies, had yet to be formulated as a cinematic genre; on the screen, India was still treated more as melodrama than adventure.

John Ford had notched up almost 50 films in the director's chair when he took on this project in the late 20's coinciding with the advent of sound.Far less well known than its 1953 re-make (known AS KING OF THE KHYBER RIFLES) with Tyrone Power in the Victor McLlaglen role, the story is that of British Army Officer Captain King, who encounters way more than he expected when he is asked to put down an Indian rebellion up around the Khyber Pass.Very dated now and without the benefit of wide screen color which so enhances desert dramas especially, BLACK WATCH is still an interesting time-capsule. I saw it many years ago on late night TV, both to compare with the later version and to see how John Ford's direction held up in 1929. On both counts, the film scored well!